Doubleheader Means Double Homers For O’Neill

Tacoma split its doubleheader in Albuquerque on Tuesday evening, and Tyler O’Neill homered in both games of the twinbill.

He hit a tape-measure shot down the left field line in the top of the first inning of the opening game, briefly giving Tacoma a 3-0 lead in a game it would eventually lose, 5-3.

O’Neill launched a sky-high homer to left in fourth inning of Game Two, which the Rainiers won 9-3. Tacoma ended a six-game losing streak with the win.

Albuquerque has been kind to the Rainiers 22-year-old outfielder. O’Neill has homered in all three games of this series, and is 7-for-13 at the plate.

But he’s been hot for much longer than three games in Albuquerque. Over his last 25 games, O’Neill is batting .330 with 11 homers and 25 RBI. He has a .432 on-base percentage and a .723 slugging percentage during the 25 games.

Despite being red-hot at the plate, O’Neill is still striking out at a high rate. In 94 at-bats during the 25-game stretch, O’Neill has struck out 31 times. He also has an encouraging 16 walks during this period.

Strikeouts are always going to be part of his game. It will be interesting to see if he makes enough contact to overcome them when he gets to the big leagues (whenever that is). He certainly does damage when he makes contact!

RAINIERS ROUND-UP

Yesterday: Albuquerque and Tacoma split a doubleheader. The Isotopes won the opener, 5-3, when Tacoma scored three runs in the top of the first but failed to tack on afterwards. That wasn’t a problem in Game Two, when Tacoma mashed 16 hits during a 9-3 win.

Hot Rainiers: Gordon Beckham is heating up. He’s 9-for-22 over a six-game hitting streak… Tyler O’Neill has slashed .330/.432/.723 over his last 25 games, with 11 homers and 25 RBI… Tyler Smith has played 37 straight errorless games at shortstop, dating back two months to May 18. That doesn’t include ten error-free games in the majors with Seattle.

Look Out For: Ryan McMahon has an eight-game hitting streak… Noel Cuevas, a PCL All-Star, has a 12-game hitting streak… Mike Tauchman‘s 11-game hitting streak ended in the first game of the doubleheader yesterday.

Broadcast: The pregame show starts at 5:50 on South Sound Sports 850 AM. The broadcast also streams online via the TuneIn app – just click here.

PCL Scoreboard: Follow all Pacific Coast League games in real-time with links to Gameday screens right here.

Links:

Four Rainiers players took an Uber from Phoenix to Albuquerque on Sunday night / Monday morning. The Albuquerque Journalcovers that, and has an info box on last night’s games.

MiLB.com has a link with video of the two Tyler O’Neill homers. That’s Albuquerque broadcaster Josh Suschon on the calls.

Like this:

LikeLoading...

Related

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 19th, 2017 at 12:55 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.